Posts Tagged ‘outline’

[Editor’s note: Cartographers looking for Douglas-Peucker type line simplication in Illustrator now have a solution to Illustrator’s default simplify command when trying to generalize features like river oxbows. Jim started on the problem of fixing an Illustrator bug (see image above) where redundant points were created in the path outline command, and now has a more generalized solution.]

Jim Heck shared an amazing tool for Adobe Illustrator with me recently to deal with the irritating bug in versions CS3 and CS4 where redundant points (stacked on top of each other, illustrated above where the dupplicate points are pulled away from the basic shape) are created on outline or offset of a path’s stroke. The script (in Javascript) and Action set he created quickly remove these redundant points while still keeping the path shape. He does this with a bit of behind the scenes trigonometry wizardry. Please note this bug still exists in CS4 contray to rumors, though is lesser virulent form than CS3 (confirmed by me via email with Adobe engineers).

I’ve worked with Jim to refine it the last couple weeks. I think it’s ready for prime time now.

Screenshots:

Settings shown to remove redundant points for outlined path screenshot above. I used a tolerance of 12 points for the river ox bow screenshot below.

How it works:

Selected path points only or all document paths

Set distance tolerance in page units (optional)

Works in locked objects

Works in compound paths

Reporting, Selection, and Removal modes

Cartographic applications:

I illustrate below the result of using Jim’s generalization script on a typial river path and you can see in area 1a and 2b how the ox bow removal is light years above Illustrator’s default path simplify command which grossly distorts the shape in the pursuit of point removal. Jim’s script preserves the shape and removes the tiny, tight wiggles. It needs a little bit more programming work to fix areas 1b and 2a + 2c where the shape is loosing some fidelity for not keeping the trailing point in the series of removed points. And maybe needing to keep an intermediary point between 2a and 2c for shape since this is a longer removal?

With a little more tweaking, this tool will become popular for cartographers since we often want to simplify lines while keeping the overall geometry shape when reducing clustered points. The opposite may be achievable, too, when adding points selectively to long curves, but NOT to segments of the line that are already dense with points. But that’s for a 2.0 release